Sean Eddy Alvin Goldfarb Distinguished Professor of Computational Biology Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering Washington University

THE MODERN RNA WORLD: NOT ALL GENES ENCODE PROTEINS

Rather than encoding proteins, some genes produce RNAs that function directly as RNAs. Genome sequence analysis, functional genomics, and new computational algorithms have enabled a number of new experiments that have begun to show that RNA genes and RNA-based regulatory circuits are much more prevalent that we suspected. It is becoming apparent that functional noncoding RNAs are produced from a large class of genes that has been almost invisible to both computational and experimental molecular genetics, just because the properties of RNA genes are unlike what we expect from "normal" protein-coding genes.

Rather than encoding proteins, some genes produce RNAs that function directly as RNAs. Genome sequence analysis, functional genomics, and new computational algorithms have enabled a number of new experiments that have begun to show that RNA genes and RNA-based regulatory circuits are much more prevalent that we suspected. It is becoming apparent that functional noncoding RNAs are produced from a large class of genes that has been almost invisible to both computational and experimental molecular genetics, just because the properties of RNA genes are unlike what we expect from "normal" protein-coding genes.